Pig Models in Translational Surgery

Abstract

Background: Because rodents are too small to perform surgical procedures on people, large mammals are frequently required for surgical studies. Because of its similar overall anatomy and physiology, the pig has a very high translational value and is thus frequently used as the first choice in surgical research.

Summary: In cardiovascular treatments, it helped design stents, improve coronary bypass grafting, and perform heart valve xenotransplants. Future efforts will be concentrated on improving the models and, as a result, the trustworthiness of the preclinical findings. Pigs have been used in gastro-intestinal surgery for a variety of purposes, including the development of meshes for abdominal defect repair and the enhancement of surgical methods aimed at compensating functional impairments. A special application has been made in liver regeneration and transplantation procedures, which have promising future prospects, as well as in metabolic surgical research for metabolic illness interventional treatment. Pigs have mostly been used in endocrine surgery to develop pancreatic and islets transplantation for type 1 diabetes therapy, with little research on the other glands. Osteoarticular and neurosurgery are two fields where the pig is increasingly being used: for ethical reasons rather than non-human primate models in neurosurgery, and because this species' rapid growth allows for the testing of the biomechanical properties of orthopedic devices in the context of skeletal growth. In general, the pig has a current and future role in testing novel surgical equipment or bioengineering solutions, establishing new minimally invasive techniques, and training in robotic surgery, regardless of discipline. Finally, pig-to-human organ xenotransplantation poses a significant translational surgical hurdle. If the research has reached a milestone with some alive patients receiving heart or kidney transplants from pigs with various genetic alterations, more evidence is needed to demonstrate the safety and long-term effectiveness of the procedure, as well as to expand it to other organs such as the liver.

Key messages: In conclusion, the pig model has resulted in significant breakthroughs in surgical research, with future prospects centered mostly on xenotransplantation. The use of the pig in biomedical research will have to deal with rising societal ethical standards.

Keywords: Cardiothoracic surgery; Gastro-intestinal surgery; Pig model; Surgical research; Xenotransplantation.